In this ‘Vicky Donor’ remake, the old premise has been explored with a fresh pair of eyes, and with a very different sensibility.

Spoilers ahead…

When I heard that Dharala Prabhu was a remake of Shoojit Sircar’s Vicky Donor, I knew it wouldn’t be an exact remake. “Tamil sensibilities” — at least as perceived by the industry — are different, after all. So I expected a fair amount of sanitising in this story of an ultra-virile footballer who becomes a sperm donor. (In other words, his new job, too, is about hitting the target, ova and ova again.) But the director, Krishna Marimuthu, springs a surprise. His film is at once an homage to the original and a quietly radical reworking of it. This isn’t a case of “let’s spray Harpic on the toilet humour and make the premise safe for our family audiences…” You know how, sometimes, we watch something and wonder, “What if…!” That’s what Krishna has done. He has explored the old premise with a fresh pair of eyes, and with a very different sensibility.

Nice review, talks a lot about the movie without giving away much. Was also thinking about how cinema is a mirror of the things society is ‘almost’ comfortable talking about, the topics slowly progressing from inter-religion marriage to physical intimacy to live-in relationships to AIDS.

It’s useful to measure the difference in cultures as well, considering how the original version of this movie was made way before in Hindi.

The film was filled with pleasurable moments like the marriage scene you mentioned at the end. In addition to the classiness, I loved little things like the visual bit where Prabhu hits the goal post right in the middle when he makes his first donation. You don’t get the generic visual of a man surrounded by porn and exploding Tom and Jerry sounds but this is a close alternative. Just loved the innovation there. I loved how consistently the mood was maintained in the second half. Most of the “big” filmmakers in Tamil cinema kill their films with their utter disregard to the film’s mood (KV Anand, Murugadoss). It was so beautifully done here.

However, I felt that the film slightly lost its momentum from the scene where police enters. The climax didn’t work as well as it did in the original. It just felt rushed here. But this is just a small complaint in an otherwise well crafted film.